Baton Rouge prosecutors revive 1985 murder, rape case

BATON ROUGE -- A man wanted in the murder and rape of a Baton Rouge woman nearly 24 years ago will be brought to Louisiana to face charges.

East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Hillar Moore said 53-year-old Vernon Kennedy will be extradited in September from DeKalb County, Ga., where he is serving a life sentence for another murder.

Kennedy will be booked in the 1985 rape and death of 19-year-old Tina Marie Kristynik. The second-degree murder case will go before a grand jury and could then go to trial.

It is rare for the district attorney's office to prosecute such an old case, Moore said. Typically, leads run out on such cases and the cases go cold.

But due to DNA evidence and the persistence of detectives who worked on the case even after retiring from the Baton Rouge Police Department -- "we are going to honor our commitment and make sure justice is served," Moore said.

Kennedy is serving a life sentence at Ware State Prison in DeKalb County, Ga., for strangling 71-year-old Leo Houston on Oct. 31, 1995, at the Truck Stops of America Motel in Conley, Ga.

A motel cleaning woman discovered Houston's naked body the next morning, authorities have said. He was lying face down near a bed, authorities have said.

Baton Rouge police homicide detectives questioned the Walker native in Kristynik's death during their initial investigation.

Kennedy told police he vaguely knew Kristynik, that he had never been to her house and that the last time he saw her was more than a week before her death, an arrest warrant says.

At the time, no evidence in Kristynik's murder pointed to Kennedy. More than two decades later, DNA evidence not available in the 1980s linked Kennedy to Kristynik's murder.

Kristynik was raped and beaten to death Sept. 18, 1985, in an empty bedroom inside her Baton Rouge home.

Her body was found the next morning by a roommate who had been sleeping in another bedroom, court documents say. Authorities have said at least one other person was at Kristynik's home when she was killed.

Evidence, including semen recovered from Kristynik's body, was submitted to Louisiana State Police in 1985, before DNA could be analyzed.

Because the technology had not yet been developed, Kristynik's case went cold, which left Kennedy on the streets.

Moore said he feels confident in his office's ability to convict Kennedy of second-degree murder in Kristynik's death, a charge that carries a life sentence.